There are a variety of applications requiring conversion of digital data samples occurring at a first data rate to digital data samples occurring at a different second data rate. In these applications, data sampled at one rate is interpolated to provide estimates of data at a different rate or sampling phase. Sample rate conversion applications include, for example, conversion between different video standards such as between High Definition TV (HDTV) data and CCIR601 standard data and conversion between different video display formats such as between interlace and progressive display formats. Other applications include, for example, multi-media composite image formation and display e.g. for Picture-in-Picture (PIP) presentation, and data processing for digital data storage such as for CDROM or DVD applications and digital demodulation involving digital sample rate conversion for establishing frequency, phase or symbol timing synchronization. The widespread use of sample rate conversion in cost sensitive applications means that there is a need to optimize configurations for both sample rate converters and their interpolator and digital filter sub-components.
Known, classical interpolator configurations have been thought to be optimal in terms of maximizing performance and minimizing the hardware complexity involved, i.e., the numbers of adders, multipliers, registers etc. that are used. However, the sample rate converter, interpolator and digital filter systems and the methods of their derivation presented herein provide improvements over the known filter designs in both performance and reduced complexity.